As the use of computers in both the workforce and personal life has increased, so has the desire to allow for easier use of them. Many operating systems today utilize a windows based configuration of application programs. Information is displayed on a display screen in what appears to be several sheets of paper. By interfacing with the windows, a user can access any window as if grabbing a single sheet of paper. A windows based configuration allows a user to have two or more windows open on a display screen simultaneously.
Application windows are a user interface facility of all graphical user interface (GUI) systems. While application windows may vary in appearance across systems, they share many common attributes, such as a frame area with a title bar control containing window management controls, the ability to be resized and repositioned and to exist among other application windows associated with different applications. Together, multiple application windows can appear simultaneously on the screen, layered on top of each other, typically represented by the order each application window was last accessed by the user. When an application window is the window that a user is working with currently, its frame appears in an active visual state. This is in contrast to an inactive visual state when the application window is not the window the user is currently working with. These two states typically have different appearances and primarily serve to communicate to the user which application window she is currently working with.
A user interaction scenario common to modem GUIs involves multiple simultaneous application windows that share a common screen real estate. Support for multiple simultaneous application windows is part of the appeal and power of a modem GUI, but this frequently results in application windows overlapping and obscuring each other making it difficult for the user to locate or navigate to a specific application window. This type of scenario and associated solutions are commonly referred to as window management problems and solutions.
A common user interaction scenario involves an application window that requires the attention of a user to address an issue with the application process. The application window is not the application that the user is currently working with, or the application window is not currently front-most among multiple, layered application windows. Resolving this scenario requires the user to access the problematic application window, typically by selecting through a computer input device on the application window, subsequently re-layering the selected application window on top of all other application windows. Often, simply activating the application window resolves the requirement for the application to get the attention of the user.
In Windows XP by Microsoft® Corporation of Redmond, Wash., the method for indicating that an application window requires the attention of the user is to flash the frame of the application window between the active and inactive visual states. Furthermore, in Windows XP, the Task Bar application window tile control that is indirectly associated with the application window simultaneously flashes between two visual states, normal and a dedicated alert state. This implementation limits the ability of an application to express the degree or urgency to which the user's attention is required/requested. In Mac OS X by Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., there is no parallel mechanism that employs the application window. Alerting the user is indirectly achieved through an animation of the associated application icon on the application launch/switch facility, “the Dock”. There is no mechanism to represent a scale of urgency. Today only a single application state can be expressed, effectively making all expressions of the same intrinsic value to the user.